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The Syrian War has been ongoing for more than a decade, causing tragic environmental and humanitarian damage including the displacement of millions of internally displaced people and refugees. Crop production plays an important role in supporting the local economy and livelihood but it has been severely affected. In Syria, croplands are often the direct target of military operations and are also affected by war through changes in institutions, infrastructure, technology, the economy or the population. To understand the consequences of the Syrian Civil War, detailed information on the timing and the type of cropland change is necessary. In this talk, preliminary results of cropland change based on multi-sensor remote sensing archive, including Landsat, Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-1 will be presented. The results suggest a high rate of cropland abandonment close to the conflict events. Individual hotspots of abandonment will be highlighted showing the immediate impact of the conflicts. Regions controlled by different power structures show distinguished patterns of cropland change, highlighting the effects of governance and social-economic factors on land use/land cover change amid the war.

Talk is in person and streamed at